RMB Coinage

This is a brief follow-up post to my last one on assumptions. There are plenty of other websites that break down the Chinese currency much better than I can, but I thought I'd post a brief overview of the coinage since it's what puzzled me when I first got here. (Thanks entirely to my own erroneous assumptions of course!)

The Chinese rénmínbì (RMB), yuán (¥), or kuài is divided - among other things - into three coins, the 1 yuán (at the top of the picture), the 5 jiǎo (in the middle) and the 1 jiǎo (at the bottom). The ¥1 coin is pretty straightforward, but the 1 and 5 jiǎo coins didn't make sense to me until I googled them and realized that the 5 jiǎo is the equivalent of ¥0.50 or 50 cents and the 1 jiǎo is the equivalent of ¥0.10 or an American dime. (All this time I thought the cashiers were shorting me by giving me nickels and dimes for change - oops!) Assumptions - they'll get you every time!